> So are you okay with the government subpoenaing your private phone communications
You keep bringing it back to personal civil liberty because you don't have an answer to the question "So why is more government oversight of corporations bad?"
I actually have no problem with such a subpoena being attempted (it is part of the regular process of investigating a crime), but I have a problem with a court rubber-stamping it. I have no problem with the corporation I'm working for being obligated to track and furnish similar records for any corporate assets I use, and to be obligated to ask questions if they catch wind that I might be trying to skirt auditing law by pushing conversations that should be legally audited private. Catch the difference?
> Fascism is when the government controls every area of your life and of corporations. Do you think giving the government more control of the private sector will lessen the chance of fascism?
I actually do because the definition you gave is not actually what fascism is.
Fascism is a political movement emphasizing extreme nationalism, a supremacy mythos of that nation, and the militarism necessary to support such an inherently unstable structure. Among its tools can be usurpation of corporations. But tight control of corporations is also a hallmark of socialism and communism, among other structures. You may as well say its wrong to breathe air because fascists do that too.
A healthy democracy reigns in the excesses of an unfettered corporate sector. Those excesses, left unchecked, can (not will, but can) result in, among other things, fascist-leaning private company owners throwing in the power of their corporations behind like-minded politicians and building the machine that facilitates a Mussolini or Hitler rising to power. Mussolini, in particular, was funded by Italian industrialists.
> You keep bringing it back to personal civil liberty because you don't have an answer to the question "So why is more government oversight of corporations bad?"
I just gave you a real example of where corporate oversight leads to giving the government access to your personal communications.
> I actually have no problem with such a subpoena being attempted (it is part of the regular process of investigating a crime), but I have a problem with a court rubber-stamping it.
Have you not been paying attention to what the government has been doing in the name of the War on Drugs, the War on Crime and the War on Terrorism?
> Fascism is a political movement emphasizing extreme nationalism
Have you not been paying attention to what’s been happening since 2016?
> A healthy democracy reigns in the excesses of an unfettered corporate sector
Exactly what power are you afraid that Google can have over you compared to the government?
Let's assume, ad argumento, that they have monopolized digital ad tech, meaning other digital advertisers are excluded and almost all the ads you see are single-source.
Gosh, it sure would suck if fascists gained control of that single source, wouldn't it? And as we've seen, we can't trust that won't happen just because they nailed up "Don't be evil" above the door (and then it fell off later).
We should probably enforce the laws that are in place to keep a market diverse and healthy.
... I think I see your position though. You're concerned, given current political climate, that increased government oversight could give fascists more power. I echo that concern... Except that I believe we got here because fascists recognized that nobody was watching the tech henhouse and weaponized that. We had an awful lot of tech firms thinking they were bigger than political concerns and should be a world apart from government oversight right up until they realized they aided and abetted those who organized Jan 6th, then... Oops.
You keep bringing it back to personal civil liberty because you don't have an answer to the question "So why is more government oversight of corporations bad?"
I actually have no problem with such a subpoena being attempted (it is part of the regular process of investigating a crime), but I have a problem with a court rubber-stamping it. I have no problem with the corporation I'm working for being obligated to track and furnish similar records for any corporate assets I use, and to be obligated to ask questions if they catch wind that I might be trying to skirt auditing law by pushing conversations that should be legally audited private. Catch the difference?
> Fascism is when the government controls every area of your life and of corporations. Do you think giving the government more control of the private sector will lessen the chance of fascism?
I actually do because the definition you gave is not actually what fascism is.
Fascism is a political movement emphasizing extreme nationalism, a supremacy mythos of that nation, and the militarism necessary to support such an inherently unstable structure. Among its tools can be usurpation of corporations. But tight control of corporations is also a hallmark of socialism and communism, among other structures. You may as well say its wrong to breathe air because fascists do that too.
A healthy democracy reigns in the excesses of an unfettered corporate sector. Those excesses, left unchecked, can (not will, but can) result in, among other things, fascist-leaning private company owners throwing in the power of their corporations behind like-minded politicians and building the machine that facilitates a Mussolini or Hitler rising to power. Mussolini, in particular, was funded by Italian industrialists.